I think you’ve changed things, but I can’t remember the original clearly enough to be sure. It feels much more easily understandable but that could be because it’s familiar. I think it used to be a mecha-zapdos instead of golurk-shaped, which, if it is a change, is one I like – continues the overall jankiness of Shy’s soul not having the right shaped body.

You wouldn’t capitalize animal or mouse or dragon, so you shouldn’t capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu or charizard. The only time you should capitalize it is if you’re using it as the pokemon’s name, ie, Ash’s pikachu is called Pikachu. This is because you only capitalize when it’s a proper noun, which are the names of places or things. Similar reasoning should be applied to any other words you’re thinking of capitalizing, like trainer or professor or gym.

[I only had one left, only one badge. It was the Earth Badge from Viridian City. It was really difficult to obtain due to the Leader’s powerful ground moves. But at last, I managed to beat him and get the final badge.]

So, I definitely appreciate seeing a story starting with someone experienced, but this is a very awkward opening. You introduce the problem that he’s one badge short and then solve it in the same paragraph. It’d be much smoother to open saying he’d just gotten the badge.

Also, it’s not really the gym leader that has the powerful moves, it’s his pokemon.

[I went to where the guards were. They asked me to show them my badges, which I did, and then let me pass. ]

Overall, this is very plodding, like you’re narrating the events your sprite is going through as you play the game. You’re summarizing here, because you’re not actually showing them asking or doing anything else that would develop it into an actual scene, and yet there’s an unnecessary level of detail – first go to the guards, then get asked, then show, then go on. There’s no question that each event is going to proceed to the next, so this is the kind of thing that could be summarized as just “I showed my badges and entered.”

[wild Pokémon became stronger the deeper I went, some were even stronger than my team which was pretty strange, I didn’t thought that wild Pokémon this strong could exist. I tried to catch one, a Golem, knowing how powerful it was. It was really difficult to catch, but in the end I was able to add it to my team ]

And this is terribly videogamey in a different way. Yeah, in-game, this is the sort of thing you can do. But someone with eight badges presumably has a full team and would hesitate to ditch a party member just because the golem’s higher level, and a pokemon that seconds ago was attacking you probably shouldn’t switch over to friendship on the spot, let alone so loyal it’ll die trying to protect him the very next time he lets it out.

[I got even more terrified by looking at the ground and walls. There were remains of what seemed to be both humans and Pokémon mutilated and everything was covered in blood. ]

So, there is a lot more to horror than just gore gore gore, and particularly the idea that everyone has endless buckets of never-drying blood is more distracting than anything.

[There was something wrong, it was impossible for the Arbok to penetrate Golem’s thick skin with their fangs, yet they engulfed it anyway. ]

Similarly, while something impossible happening can sometimes be an okay element of horror, for the most part describing a situation by bringing up it can’t happen just makes it feel like a plot hole instead.

[I wanted to help it, but fear took over and I could only run. ‘I’m sorry pal! I didn’t want to leave you behind! But I’m just not that strong…’ I thought. I couldn’t. I was really sorry, but I couldn’t go back. It was painful to see my friend being eaten alive by those Arbok, and I couldn’t do anything about it.]

I mean, he could absolutely have recalled his pokemon. That’s another issue here, you just flatly say he cared and is sad but there’s no actual feeling behind that.

And there’s no real resolution for why the arbok are super-arbok, why no one ever notices and tries to do something about it…or even why you picked arbok instead of zubat and golbat, which do a pretty good job of mobbing the player to death and their blood drinking tendencies would be a lot better fit for a horror ending about being thrown in a pit to die by inches than the idea that somehow baby snakes are nibbling people to death.

So, this is the sort of fic I feel people have in mind when they say stop criticizing children, and the author’s note talks about being in college.

Dialogue is written as “Hello,” she said or “Hello!” she said, never “Hello.” She said or “Hello.” she said or “Hello,” She said or “Hello” she said. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn’t contain a speech verb, which is a verb describing how the dialogue is said. (“Speak” is not a speech verb.) In that case it’s written as “Hello.” She grinned, never “Hello,” she grinned or “Hello,” She grinned or “Hello.” she grinned. Note that something isn’t a speech verb just because it’s a sound you make with your mouth, so generally stuff like laughed or giggled is in the second category. Furthermore, if you’re breaking up two complete sentences it’s “Hi,” she said. “This is it.” not “Hi,” she said, “this is it.” or “Hi,” she said “this is it.” And if you’re breaking up a sentence in the middle, it’s “Hi. This,” she said, “is it.” The same punctuation and capitalization rules apply to thoughts, except you don’t use quotation marks or any other ones with thoughts.

[“Please have sex with me!” Ash said.

“What?! No!” Diantha said.

“Please Diantha, you have such a nice body. I just gotta have sex with you today.” Ash said]

It’s really important when writing porn to sound like you, yourself, are old enough to have sex with anyone rather than a small child whose parents should really be keeping a closer eye on.

Following up on the above, this person may well be in college or even older! But even if they are it’s still squicky that they apparently have all the coherency of a middle schooler.

I’m torn between being impressed at your use of alt letters and wondering what the point of it was.

You wouldn’t capitalize animal or mouse or dragon, so you shouldn’t capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu or charizard. The only time you should capitalize it is if you’re using it as the pokemon’s name, ie, Ash’s pikachu is called Pikachu. This is because you only capitalize when it’s a proper noun, which are the names of places or things. Similar reasoning should be applied to any other words you’re thinking of capitalizing, like trainer or professor or gym.

[She reached in her pocket, and pulled out a Pokedex… that of course, was empty, apart from Seel and Dewgong. ]

Game pokedexes record anything seen, they just don’t have full data until it’s caught. Show pokedex is an already loaded encyclopedia. Either way, unless the ocean around her that she and her father are currently fishing in is actually a blighted dead zone, she should’ve seen another pokemon at some point.

[(She had brought it since Splash’s Pokeball was mangled, and though Splash never stayed in Pokeball, she could catch her in an emergency such as alien invasions or something). ]

This is a really clunky explanation. A much better excuse for her having a pokeball on her is exactly the situation she’s in. Running into an aggressive or even just hurt wild pokemon is something that’s reasonably likely to happen, and a pokeball is a really good thing to have under those circumstances.

[she thanked Arceus profusely that it worked.]

Even the people in the region Arceus comes from don’t worship or even pay Arceus any mind. If you’ve got your own region and your own pokemon, give them their own legendaries (and their own relationship with their legendaries, because that varies by region as well, it’s not just one-size-fits-all generic religiousness).

I will say this is a much better opening than the typical wakeup and bug the professor setup, but I’m left with little idea of where you’re going. There’s not a clear sense of how these people fit into the world. They’re out fishing, but it’s not clear if that’s something her father needs to do or if this is fun leisure fishing. There’s a weird island, but its weirdness isn’t tied to any stories she knows and doesn’t seem to mean anything to her father either given he lets her go off by herself to explore it. And she catches a pokemon the pokedex doesn’t know, but that doesn’t seem to mean anything to her either – not even on the level of “oh cool I caught a new pokemon” or “eh, that makes sense because this region has lots of undiscovered pokemon and this isn’t a big deal”.

Semicolons should only ever be used when connecting two complete sentences and even then almost never.

[ his Eevee ]

You wouldn’t capitalize animal or mouse or dragon, so you shouldn’t capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu or charizard. The only time you should capitalize it is if you’re using it as the pokemon’s name, ie, Ash’s pikachu is called Pikachu. This is because you only capitalize when it’s a proper noun, which are the names of places or things. Similar reasoning should be applied to any other words you’re thinking of capitalizing, like trainer or professor or gym.

[He remembered how excited he was to finally receive his chosen starter, a Squirtle. ]

[So why? Why was he always one step ahead of him? ]

So this seems to be missing out on the quirk of focusing on Blue rather than Red, or the rival instead of the protagonist. Blue doesn’t luck into his preferred starter happening to have a type advantage, Blue picks based on what will give him an advantage. And Blue actually does spend all his time one step ahead of Red – he’s there when you get places, he’s first to get a given badge, and unless you do a lot of shenanigans, he’ll have more pokemon in his pokedex when he brags on the SS Anne. It’s not that Red is always one step ahead of Blue – it’s that no matter how far ahead Blue gets, Red is always overtaking him again.

[However, Arceus had other plans.]

Not a thing generally and particularly not something people care about in Kanto – they’re not even reverent about the legendaries they do have, let alone one that’s been forgotten even in its homeland.

[You’re pokemon ]

Your. You’re means “you are”.

[It was no secret that Oak favored Red instead of him. He didn’t even try to hide it, and frankly, he would have cared less if it weren’t for the fact that everyone favored Red.]

I mean it’s not impossible that Blue is able to completely shrug off being mistreated by what appears to be his only parental figure, but it’s hard to buy. Also, what happens at the League is outright abusive if Blue is anything short of an absolute prick to his pokemon, and there’s no sign of that here, so it’s not just being neglected by his grandfather, it’s the man tearing him down any chance he gets. The only other way it could work is if you spent more time here building up the rest of Blue’s family, giving him a mother and father so that it’s plausible he and Oak were never close, and even then that doesn’t change that Oak is a horrible person for acting like this, it just explains why Blue isn’t emotionally wrecked from it.

Then when you add in that oh, everyone else also “favors” Red, and right after saying Blue thinks being told he deserved to lose because he was an awful person whose pokemon must hate him is just his granddad “favoring” Red… This is really painting an awful picture of Blue’s life. It’s a wonder he’s even functional.

As a result, there is such whiplash when Red shows up and you move into “oh, Blue cares a lot about Red and Red cares about him!” because holy shit the baggage of one kid being the golden child and the other being the scapegoat, and not just one family but the entire town their entire lives doing that to them. The baggage of Blue having “if Red wasn’t here maybe anyone in the world would care about me”, the baggage of Red having Blue’s resentment for everything everyone else did.

I am pretty sure that’s completely not what you were going for, but in that case you absolutely have to work out what’s going on with Blue so he has something other than “second best/absolute worst”, because game canon really doesn’t work when you’re thinking about these characters as multi-faceted people and not just the rival you want to stomp down. Oak backing Red would come off far better if, say, many or most people liked Blue better. And Oak dressing down Blue would come off better if Blue knew it was an actual comment about himself, maybe talked about how it was true and he’s made a lot of strives in how he treats his pokemon as a result, that Oak was looking at Blue and saying this because he does pay attention to Blue and wanting Blue to be better, instead of it just being about how Red is better than him and Oak couldn’t care less about Blue otherwise.

[i like to write my fics in present tense before converting everything to past tense ]

I mean, that’s a thing you can do if you think it works better in past, but present tense has become a lot more popular and I don’t think you’ll find too many people mind reading it.

[Besides,” she grinned cheekily, “chances to aggravate Snivy only come once in a blue moon, so of course I’m gonna use it to its fullest potential!” ]

Dialogue is written as “Hello,” she said or “Hello!” she said, never “Hello.” She said or “Hello.” she said or “Hello,” She said or “Hello” she said. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn’t contain a speech verb, which is a verb describing how the dialogue is said. (“Speak” is not a speech verb.) In that case it’s written as “Hello.” She grinned, never “Hello,” she grinned or “Hello,” She grinned or “Hello.” she grinned. Note that something isn’t a speech verb just because it’s a sound you make with your mouth, so generally stuff like laughed or giggled is in the second category. Furthermore, if you’re breaking up two complete sentences it’s “Hi,” she said. “This is it.” not “Hi,” she said, “this is it.” or “Hi,” she said “this is it.” And if you’re breaking up a sentence in the middle, it’s “Hi. This,” she said, “is it.” The same punctuation and capitalization rules apply to thoughts, except you don’t use quotation marks or any other ones with thoughts.

You wouldn’t capitalize animal or mouse or dragon, so you shouldn’t capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu or charizard. The only time you should capitalize it is if you’re using it as the pokemon’s name, ie, Ash’s pikachu is called Pikachu. This is because you only capitalize when it’s a proper noun, which are the names of places or things. Similar reasoning should be applied to any other words you’re thinking of capitalizing, like trainer or professor or gym.

This is far, far too short for a chapter. Either Ash’s diary entries need to be a lot more elaborate or, more likely, you should post multiple entries at once.

5 Comments

So, this is the sort of fic I feel people have in mind when they say stop criticizing children, and the author’s note talks about being in college.

What do you mean by this?

Following up on the above, this person may well be in college or even older! But even if they are it’s still squicky that they apparently have all the coherency of a middle schooler.

I was going to say “Well, ‘What!? No!’ would literally be my response in that situation”, but than I thought to see what happens in literally the next sentence after your quote, and… yeeeeeeeeeeeah.

Literally my first attempt at writing porn ever was better than this. I wouldn’t be able to imagine this person being in college or older, even if I hadn’t checked their profile and found Lego Ninjago porn.

The fic was written in an exceptionally childish/simple way: this happened. this happened. this happened. If I was to guess the author’s age from their writing, I’d think they were quite young because it’s laid out like a young kid would. What’s likely actually going on isn’t that this is the absolute best that can be expected of them (as would be true of a young enough kid, since there’s certain things the brain just can’t do at earlier stages) but someone who’s capable of far more but hasn’t had any practice, so they haven’t moved beyond where they were when they were younger.

…the pokeporn person is probably actually a kid because everything I’ve heard of Lego Ninjago is it’s very precisely targeted at kids and doesn’t waste much space on also throwing in stuff older audiences would enjoy.

someone who’s capable of far more but hasn’t had any practice, so they haven’t moved beyond where they were when they were younger

God, I feel this. Sentence variation, what is it?

the pokeporn person is probably actually a kid

Yeah, I could believe that first one is an adult who just isn’t that great a writer, but even if you showed me undeniable proof that the pokeporn author was an adult, I’d still have trouble believing it. My first time writing porn was better than that, but my first time writing porn was also well into my twenties.